Letters to David
Irving on this Website

Unless
correspondents ask us not to, this Website will
post selected letters that it receives and invite
open debate.

Quick
navigation

David
Hebden asks
about a familiar piece of World War 2 folklore: the film of
the hangings of the July 20 plotters

Did
Hitler watch the hanging movies?

Dear Mr. Irving,

ONE of the articles published on Lady
Mosley's death quoted her as refusing to believe that
Adolf Hitler would have watched films of the hangings
of July 1944 conspirators. What's the evidence that he
did?

Free
downloadof David Irving's booksBookmark
the download page to find the latest new free
books

David Irving
responds:

HIS adjutants told me he
refused. When Hermann Fegelein brought in photos
of the hangings to show him, Hitler absent- mindedly
picked one up, realised what it was a picture of, and
angrily swept the rest of the heap of photos onto the
floor, exclaiming that he wanted to move on -- he did not
want to be constantly reminded of the 20th of July.

From memory, I believe it was
Otto Günsche who described that to me as an
eye-witness, or (more probably) Erik von Amsberg
or Johannes Göhler, Fegeleins's adjutant, who
died just a few weeks ago. It is in Hitler's
War anyway.

Even more interesting is the
story of the "filmed" brutal hangings of the conspirators
on "piano wire". In fact there is evidence that the whole
scene was enacted by a film crew supplied by British
Intelligence, and the film was released at the end of
1944 by MI6 in Switzerland for foreign attachés to
watch, who believed it was the real thing. There is an
interesting correspondence in the Goebbels propaganda
ministry papers about this fiendish trick of the
perfidious British. I mentioned it in my Goebbels
biography.